Minuscule: Very Small Things

One little word to kick-start creativity - #3

Minuscule - Adjective

Something described as minuscule is very small.

“minuscule,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/minuscule.

Some of my favorite images are of small, little things that can be easily overlooked when we’re rushing through our days. This week’s word is minuscule, and to illustrate I’ve gathered a collection of small nature photos and stories from my archives: two photos from my backyard, two from a local park, and one that fell into my lap on a windy day.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This tiny acorn fell from its Oak tree and landed right on our table while my son Ryan and I relaxed outside with coffee and cookies after his first day of High School back in 2016. We couldn’t help but think that there must be a special connection between the acorn and Ryan, a young freshman with so much potential. So, we decided to make this little nut his good luck charm. It’s a reminder of all the exciting things that await him as he grows and learns about the world.

After our local power company removed the large evergreen trees in our front yard in 2013, I thought my favorite patch of shade-loving trillium was gone for good. However, I carefully transplanted a few hardy specimens into our backyard, hoping they would return. The following spring, I found this little seedling waking up under a leafy rhododendron.

A few years ago I visited Lynnwood’s Heritage Park hoping to tour a vintage trolley car from the Seattle – Everett Interurban Railway and learn about the town’s pre-Depression era poultry boom as the second largest egg-producing area in the country. This three-acre city park is the final resting place for several historic buildings that were moved to make way for freeway expansion projects but a post about the collection will have to wait for another day. The restored trolley car was behind a locked gate and the buildings were closed for the season so I wandered through the wet grass, taking pictures of some pretty fall mushrooms.

If you’d like to learn more about Heritage Park and the early days of Alderwood Manor before the area grew into the city of Lynnwood, here are two good places to start: Heritage Park and the Lynnwood-Alderwood Manor Heritage Association.

Every Monday, I’ll select one word from the weekly Merriam-Webster recap and explore it. If you’d like to follow along, learn a new word or two, and share your interpretation, restack my prompt with a link to yours or tag me. I’d love to see where your creativity takes you! If my weekly word doesn’t resonate see below for either the seven previous words of the day or the top five dictionary look-ups at the end of each post and you can choose your own adventure.

The words of the week: January 13 - 19

• secular

• deus ex machina

• hackneyed

• parlay

• apprehension

• minuscule

• virtuoso